Friday, April 18, 2014

Disabled People Need Three Things

I had fun a couple weeks ago writing a three-part series of blog posts on different forms of "Ableism”. So, I have decided to do another series, this time fleshing out another “grand unified theory” of disability. I will argue that disabled people of all kinds only really need three things:

1. Accessibility

2. Money

3. Agency

Over the next three days, I will explain what I mean by each of these. For now I just want to clarify that when I talk about things disabled people need, I don’t count things everyone needs … like food, clothes, and shelter. I’m not talking about curing any diseases or lessening our disabilities through therapies. To me, those are separate concerns. What I am looking it is what people with disabilities uniquely need to live well with their disabilities.

Why am I doing this?

I'm doing it because I think we sometimes get so caught up in specific goals that we lose sight of what we really after. There are thousands of disability-related policies to advocate, hard-won victories to defend, and small, incremental improvements to shoot for. But really, they all relate in some way to these three things ... Accessibility, Money, and Agency. Or, they should relate, and if we are working our asses off for something that doesn't relate, then maybe that's a sign we should reassess what we are doing.